Glob-a-log

(Only their mother, et cetera, et cetera…)

I don’t know about you but me, I’ve heard quite enough about a certain dead DIY albino - up to and very much including the point that a BBC nitwit more or less compared the dead ‘King of Pop’ with the very much alive ‘King of Tennis’, Roger Federer.

Now, it tells you about all you need to know about our dearly deceased that he absolutely loved that stupid title - and anyone who knows even a little bit about Federer knows he would find this latest coronation acutely embarrassing.

What’s more, he may be too polite to mention it but I am not, so I am quite happy to state that such a claim, certainly in this particular context, is also in very bad taste.

Not quite as bad as a certain other BBC presenter who calls old gentlemen to inform them that he has fucked their granddaughters but bad enough anyway.

Enough about Michael Jackson though - and more than enough about BBC idiots.

There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth, Sue Barker, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. More things below earth too, as the following Telegraph article shows.

Again, I don’t know about you but some news stories just make me very happy - and this is one of them:

“As a thin drizzle fell on the World Worm Charming Championships on Saturday, Stan Allen strummed his guitar and felt the earth move at his feet. This was broadly the idea, although it wasn’t clear whether the worms emerging mob-handed around him were coming up to enjoy the entertainment or to escape from the noise. “They like rock best,” Stan 61, explained between riffs. “Easy listening doesn’t do it for them, and classical puts them to sleep.”

Worm charming is an ancient, noble and mysterious art, which, while intended primarily to bring worms out of the soil also manages to bring out the worst in its ultra-competitive practitioners. Tales abound of dirty tricks and dubious practices. One charmer was banned for life after concealing worms in his trouser legs to sprinkle on the ground – “we got suspicious when we saw him wearing bicycle clips,” says championship organiser Mike Forster. Others have sunk to chopping worms in half to double their totals.”

(Bad but slightly less annoying than a Michael Jackson clip…)

(Yup, but you’re still not supposed to eat them…)

Now, here’s another weird one for you:

“Horse owners will have to sign a pledge not to eat their animals under new EU legislation, it has been reported. The rule, aimed at continental Europe, where two million horses are reportedly eaten every year, will still have to be signed in Britain.”

Nice, isn’t it, how the Brussels bureaucratic machine cares about horses?

Okay, maybe not quite:

“The Horse Identification Regulations, which will come into force at the beginning of next month, is partly to stop vets’ drugs from entering human diets. Anyone who refuses to sign up to the regulations could face prison or an unlimited fine.”

Enter the usual suspects, crying foul over this proposed bill.

No, not the odd ‘Brew up a buffet of horse’ whisperer, or the Guild of Black Beauty Butchers. It’s the British, of course:

“Kate Gillanders, of Kindross, Pertshire, told The Sun “We don’t see our horses as cattle. The thought of them being eaten is utterly repulsive. Brussels is poking its nose in where it should not be. The EU knows nothing about me and cares even less. This nonsense is somebody else’s obsession.”"

Quite.

Greater love has no woman for a horse than to protest against laws that protect them…

Anyway, I can’t say I’m in favour of this law myself - but then I’m not a vegetarian. Still, even if I were, what’s the sense of claiming it’s ‘utterly repulsive’ to eat a horse and perfectly okay to eat cows, pigs and chickens?

Now, I’m all for treating our food with due consideration. I don’t eat canned vegetables and I won’t buy meat that comes from animal concentration camps. That’s not because I think carrots or chickens necessarily got rights but I do think they deserve to be treated with some measure of respect.

However, I’m not sure it’s anything but the crassest form of sentimentality to judge some animals to be fit for consumption, while being repulsed by the idea of eating others…

… and that’s not even going into this whole horse riding industry, run by these horse lovers.

Now, me, if I had the choice of being a sheep, or a cow, who could live a peaceful life in a nice bit of meadow, before being eaten by whoever had kept me warm during those dreary English winters…

… or being a horse, who would have to jump over fences, carry stroppy kids around in ever more boring circles, be used as a sports utility in polo games and perform as a 1500 pounds sex toy for erotically confused teenage girls and not to be eaten at the end of such a foul existence…

… well, then I think I would rather star in a Cow & Chicken cartoon, even if it ended with a shot of some hungry bastard holding a fork and knife and slobber-stuttering, “That’s all, folks…!”

(Eat that, Seabiscuit… Or THIS…!)

(Gravity: Been coming to a place near you, out of nowhere, since Newton…)

Now, this truly is a tale for our time:

“Office worker Mr Coleman, 23, was ‘tweeting’ to his followers on his Blackberry while jogging to work when he cracked his head on a heavy low-hanging branch. The force of the impact sent the dazed runner crashing to the pavement and left him with a badly bruised black eye.

“One minute I was running along posting a tweet, the next I was lying on my back on the pavement in agony. The branch came out of nowhere and hit my face hard.””

Yes, that old ‘came out of nowhere’ defence.

Also beloved by car drivers who use their mobiles while driving (and the more old-fashioned creeps who enjoy a bit of drunk-driving) and subsequently hit a dog, child, granny or cuddly E.T. crossing the road – all of whom ALWAYS came out of nowhere.

The ‘came out of nowhere’ defence also has a twin brother, called the ‘noone could have foreseen this’ gambit.

That one has been used extensively, throughout history, both by the ‘Peace at any price’ brigade and by those who’ve never seen a a fight they didn’t want to pick or join, immediately. (Humanity isn’t very good at learning from past mistakes but it wouldn’t hurt for our professional doves and hawks to be forced, each day, to watch clips of Mr Chamberlain’s trip to Munich and Colin Powell’s WMD speech at the UN, respectively.)

More recently, both the ‘came out of nowhere’ and ‘noone could have foreseen this’ defence were used by both governments and financial institutions to ‘explain’ the latest global economical meltdown.

(It’s close to being a law of nature that, whenever both these defences are used, we deal with the kind of crisis that could, in fact, have been foreseen by any toddler with merely a working knowledge of piggy banking.)

Of course, all of us are human and thus kind of stupid, so it’s good that we can fall back on these commonly used tactics – and, as long as we don’t overdo it, we maybe should allow ourselves and our fellow dumb critters the use of them.

I’d suggest anyone up till the age of ten might use them, more or less, indiscriminately. Teens probably should be given a monthly allowance, until both their zits and hormones have had time to settle down a bit.

Between the age of twenty and thirty, we might just let people get away with these lame excuses once per season but after that, until death, senility or incontinence hits, there shouldn’t be a call for this type of defence more than once a year.

One caveat though: It doesn’t matter whether you talk about the collapse of a global market system or the disintegration of an overstuffed bin bag: If you’ve used one of these two defences for either of these occasions, you’re not allowed to use any of the two, during the rest of that calendar year.

Me, I’ve been saving up mine, for the last few years but I do intend to use one of them with a vengeance, whenever the time is ripe.

It involves a baker’s dozen of beehives, an outdoors swimming pool filled with honey, a half brick and a quite elaborate pulley system.

Now, I’m not picky and I only need one individual out of the following groups of persons to walk past my house:

1) Any TV quiz or reality TV show host or TV sports analist
2) Any politician
3) Any professional PC plodder
4) Any raving Godhead, be they Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jew
5) Any Holocaust denier, Scientologist or Elvis-shot-Kennedy-and-blew-up-the-Twin-Towers type
6) Any of the makers of ‘Mama Mia!’, ‘Dances with Wolves’, ‘Spiderman 3′, ‘The Nutty Professor’, ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and/or ‘Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves’
7) Any of the inventors of the karaoke machine, the Crazy Frog ring tone, elevator music and speaking toilets
8) Bono

So, whenever any of the above mentioned persons will find themselves struggling not to drown in my honey pool, while beset by a horde of angry bees who don’t like their hives getting pulley-ed from over them and while sporting an angry bruise where a carefully coincidentally launched half-brick hit them…

… well, then I will simply smile politely, with a slightly puzzled look on my face and state that whatever just happened precisely:

a) came out of nowhere and
b) could not have been foreseen by anyone…

(On the Hill, in Westminster, in any self-respecting pub and wherever people roam and gather…)

.                     (They kill playwrights, don’t they…?)

You know that old Greek fable about the tortoise and the hare, I suppose. If not, here’s a very brief summary:

They held a race. The hare lost.

(As far as I know, the tortoise wasn’t tested for steroids.)

Of course, these days you wouldn’t be able to organize such a contest – not without the Health & Safety mob breathing in your neck and turning a simple running track into a highly complicated steeple chase circuit, inside a rubber tiled maze.

For one, I’m sure they would make the participants wear crash helmets. Especially the tortoise. You know how those creatures love speeding and are so vulnerable that, if you drop them from great height, this will always lead to fatalities.

Not resulting in the demise of the tortoise, of course. If we believe another Greek story, that is, in which it is claimed that the playwright Aeschylus was killed by a tortoise that had fallen from great height on the writer’s head, after it had been dropped by an eagle (which may or may not have mistaken Aeschylus’s bald head for a bit of rock.)

Anyway, talking of tortoises – and crash helmets:

“Vets have fitted a ‘crash helmet’ on a giant tortoise to protect him while a hole in his shell grows over. Timmy is thought to have been hurt in a fight with a rival tortoise at their home in Paignton Zoo, Devon. Zoo vets came up with the idea of covering the wound in the Aldabra giant tortoise to keep it clean and protected during the slow healing process.”

Which, you have to admit, makes quite a bit more sense than you would have any right to expect from a story that carried the words ‘tortoise’ & ‘crash helmet’ in its headline.

Unfortunately, you can’t say the same about the following animal related tale – but that’s not all that surprising. When it comes to common sense I would bet on a zoo vet against any more posh kind of white coat, whenever the twain would meet to compete.

It’s like that tortoise & hare story, really. The hare might have a string of impressive doctor titles after its name but you just KNOW the tortoise will beat it handsomely, with or without the benefit of a crash helmet.

Onto the story itself though.

It’s about a duck called Daisy and some daffy scientist from the University of Salford:

“Scientists say they, with the help of a farmyard duck called Daisy, have sunk an enduring theory that a duck’s quack does not produce an echo. Acoustic expert Professor Trevor Cox began the investigation at the University of Salford after hearing the myth referred to on several TV and radio programmes. First Daisy was recorded quacking in a special room with jagged surfaces that produces no sound reflections. Next she was moved to a reverberation chamber with cathedral-like acoustics. Finally, the data was used to create simulations of Daisy performing at the Royal Albert Hall.”

That last bit really does sound silly, doesn’t it?

I mean, why not let the duck perform in the Royal Albert Hall itself? That would have been the cheaper option, no doubt.

What’s more, I’m sure our Daisy would have been vastly more entertaining than the ‘Land of hope and glory’ crowd that usually manages to fill the place.

(The start of this clip would have been SO much better if Daisy had been the leading lady…!)

(Until proven innocent…)

Gods but this really makes me very angry:

“In an age of advanced forensic science, the first step toward ending Kenneth Reed’s prolonged series of legal appeals should be simple and quick: a DNA test, for which he has offered to pay, on evidence from the 1991 rape of which he was convicted. Louisiana, where Mr. Reed is in prison, is one of 46 states that have passed laws to enable inmates like him to get such a test. But in many jurisdictions, prosecutors are using new arguments to get around the intent of those laws, particularly in cases with multiple defendants, when it is not clear how many DNA profiles will be found in a sample.

The laws were enacted after DNA evidence exonerated a first wave of prisoners in the early 1990s, when law enforcement authorities strongly resisted reopening old cases. Continued resistance by prosecutors is causing years of delay and, in some cases, eliminating the chance to try other suspects because the statute of limitations has passed by the time the test is granted. Mr. Reed has been seeking a DNA test for three years, saying it will prove his innocence. But prosecutors have refused, saying he was identified by witnesses, making his identification by DNA unnecessary.

A recent analysis of 225 DNA exonerations by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, found that prosecutors opposed DNA testing in almost one out of five cases. In many of the others, they initially opposed testing but ultimately agreed to it. In 98 of those 225 cases, the DNA test identified the real culprit.”

The New York Times article gives more examples of prosecutors trying to circumvent or, if you want, sabotage the law. Some of these examples are truly disgusting. Like the one where a prosecutor claims that, since the original jury was “convinced of defendant’s guilt without DNA,” such a test wasn’t needed now.

It was even stated, without blushing, that the fact that 175 convicts were already exonerated by DNA was “statistically insignificant.”

Which is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard a law officer say.

Not so long ago, the prevailing thought was that it was better to let an X number of guilty go free than one innocent be imprisoned. That is no longer the case, it seems – but it is easy to see where and how things went so scandalously, so criminally wrong with the justice system.

I am no legal expert but it is not difficult to understand how a jury system, with both a defender and a prosecutor trying to convince this jury of the innocence or guilt of a defendant, can’t help but become a personally adversarial system, in which the egos of both defender and prosecutor become so inflated that the whole judicial process can become tainted beyond salvage.

In other words, for these two opposing parties winning becomes much more important than trying to determine whether the accused is actually guilty or not.

Prosecutors are by no means the only villains in this play. The law and the rules of law enforcement  have become so complicated, so bizarrely Byzantine, that there are defenders who specialize in finding loopholes and even the tiniest procedural mistakes to get any defendant off, even if they privately believe their clients to be guilty, be it of tax evasion or mass murder.

However, the state is more powerful than any individual defendant, so the prosecutor should be most careful when he or she uses the full powers of that state against any of its individual citizens. Playing ego games has, or should not have, any part in this.

It is also easy to see how the politicizing of the criminal justice system has helped to corrupt it. When judges and prosecutors have to campaign to get elected or appointed, building up a healthy résumé becomes overly important. Again, winning cases becomes more rewarding than seeking justice.

So, it should not surprise us that so many prosecutors are trying to sabotage the law that enables the convicted to have these DNA tests.

This obstruction has nothing to do with justice. It simply serves to help these prosecutors keep their positive score sheets. Like certain sports players, they don’t care all that much if they have to play the system, or outright cheat, to get these results.

To these ‘players’, their egos, public status and financial rewards are much more important than playing fair and being honourable. Winning has become all…

… and if that means locking up a thousand potentially innocent people rather than to blot their score sheet, lots of prosecutors are more than willing to have these people pay that price.

(Barry Bonds: Still not struck out for prosecution…)

(A remake with a difference…)

The Romans had this saying, ‘Mens sana in corpore sano‘, meaning that, in order to have a healthy mind, you also need a healthy body.

The following story does not really support that theory, I’m afraid:

“A French pole vaulting champion has run naked with his pole through the streets of Paris and posted the video on the Internet, in an attempt to secure a new sponsorship deal. Romain Mesnil, 31, who won a silver medal at the 2007 Athletics World Championships in Osaka, used to be sponsored by U.S. sports brand Nike but says his contract expired last year and was not renewed.”

Well, I have to say that this little stunt must have closed all the other doors for him that weren’t nailed shut already in the U.S. of A.

First, there is the problem that most American sponsors would still be weary of supporting any person or product from France. What with freedom fries and all, would any US company, in these economically difficult times, be ready to go for broke for a freedom pole vaulting Gaul?

Then, would these sponsors be ready to go all out for someone whose idea of a freedom pole would be to run around naked through Paris, with his pole freely flapping about like a seriously belated and more than a bit demented ad for that ‘Free Willy’ movie?

I mean, talking about Orcas and stuff: Remember the shit fan that hit our American dolphin Phelps, when he was caught on camera, waving about a modest doobie…?

So, I’m afraid our streaking monsieur must look elsewhere for new sponsor deals.

He still seems fairly optimistic about his chances, though:

“Mesnil said he was offering sponsorship deals for companies and individuals on the internet auction site eBay. He told a news conference: “In my mind, it was an opportunity to do something funny. I am not ready to do anything to get a sponsor.””

Well, that is funny alright, mate but ‘not ready to do anything’…?

You could have fooled me.

Oh, but I do love scientists!

Now, I know that I have said that more than once already. In fact, I’ve stated this so often that it’s almost become a mantra - or like the oft-repeated vow to be faithful by a serial adulterer.

Or, of course an adulteress…:

“While on the subject of sex, Brooks also explains that scientists remain mystified by the process of courtship. It’s a myth that females choose the biggest and flashiest males - hence the peacock’s tail, the stag’s antlers. In reality, naturalists have often observed a couple of alpha stags bashing away at each other during the rut, while the females, getting bored, slope off to mate with some less well-endowed and less aggressive beta male. The evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith named these beta males (and this is official) sneaky f*****s.”

Brilliant story, don’t you think - and the rest of the article, dealing with unsolved scientific mysteries, is well worth reading too.

Still, this anecdote, or observation, about the mating practices of certain animals had me smile like a demon who’s just caught the Pope masturbating over a leatherwear catalogue.

It’s kind of fun to imagine how the girlfriends or wives of football stars, or Olympic swimmers, or heavyweight boxers would sneak out to do it with some nerdy neighbour, while these proud alpha males are busy training - or even better yet…

… yes, I can see those women and their neighbours making out on the couch, while these athletes are winning even more medals at tournaments that are broadcasted live on TV. It sure would add a certain something if those lovers would have the TV on while they were sporting on their sofas - with the sound turned off, I suppose. It would probably be a bit too kinky if the athletes’ grunts were to mingle with those of the illicit lovers.

Anyway, there are, of course, various types of alpha males. Just as some animals have fans, or antlers, or sabre-teeth, there are also all sorts of different ways for human males to excel and lord it over their leser rivals. So, yes, you can have alpha male athletes but also alpha male writers, singers, soldiers - and even scientists, I suppose.

Or actors.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I have a phone call to make. It seems that Brad Pitt is shooting a new movie - and it would be no more than neighbourly to give Angelina a ring, to ask if she could do with some company.

I’m sure she has a couch…

(Can this really be less environmentally harmful than cow farts…?)

It’s probably very wrong of me but this following article had me laughing out loud, at quite a few moments:

So many people want to scatter the ashes of family and friends in beauty spots that the government has been forced to step in with anti-pollution rules. Last month, staff at the Jane Austen House Museum in Hampshire discovered piles of human ashes scattered around the novelist’s home and gardens, and football grounds, rivers, parks, golf courses, lakes, rivers and mountain tops have all become favourite remembrance spots.

A new leaflet from the Environment Agency says that sites must be inspected if they are to be regularly used for scattering ashes. “Individual ceremonies are unlikely to pollute the water,” it reads. “But the site you choose must not be near buildings, people bathing or marinas. On a river, it should be 1km upstream of any water abstraction. You should spread the ashes as close to the surface of the water as possible and avoid windy days.

Avoiding windy days indeed. Quite probably, nothing would disturb the solemn & melancholic act of saying farewell to one’s nearest and dearest more than when their ashes would fly right back into the mourners’ faces.

Tears might be appropriate at such a sad occasion but having to rub bits of the dearly departed out of your eyes is probably not something that should be part of the ceremony.

Still, I’m kind of disappointed that the rising popularity of spreading the ashes of our loved ones isn’t linked in some way to global warming.

Everything else seems to be, these days - and I do think that it’s somewhat unfair that our cremated bits and pieces would appear to have less environmental impact than cow farts.

Ah well, you can’t have everything, I suppose, so we will have to do with the somewhat lesser evil of Jane Austen’s house getting slowly yet completely buried under a mountain of her devoted readers’ ashes.

Although it is a real pity that Manchester United have stopped people from throwing out their cremated dead on the pitch. It would be fun to imagine how, the next time that Cristiano Ronaldo took one of his famed & elegant dives, he would end up with bits of someone’s belovéd granddad shoved up his nose.

(Gazza: Bombed again…)

Paul “Gazza” Gascoine was one of the most talented English football (or soccer) players of his generation.

He also was and still is a stupid fuck-up. The kind of professional train wreck that can only be compared with the likes of Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse.

He had talent and he wasted it. He let his team mates, his fans and his country down during a world cup, when his poor discipline lost them the chance to win that tournament.

Much more seriously though, his stupidity and alcohol addiction hurt his family. He beat up his wife, neglected his children and broke more promises to his nearest and supposedly dearest than he ever scored goals during his sporting career.

So, of course, Channel Four, the broadcasting pimp house that also gave us Big brother, is doing a documentary tonight, called ‘Surviving Gazza’. (Even the cynical C4 crowd did not dare title it ‘Saving Gazza’, in the end.)

As a Times article shows, his twelve years’ old son, Regan, is already in the ’survival’ mode - which is probably for the best:

“Gascoigne is already approaching or at the point where he is beyond salvation. The cruellest words of all those that will be broadcast this evening will come from his 12-year-old son, Regan, who tells the television cameras that “I don’t think there’s any point in helping him” and that “he’s probably going to die soon”.”

Of course, millions of people - much encouraged by the media - still talk about this whole sorry mess as if it were a profound tragedy; one of those Greek tragedies, obviously, where a virtuous but flawed hero comes to a tragic end.

The not so subtle subtext to this way of thinking is that by having a certain talent, one automatically becomes a hero. Which is, of course, a nonsense. None of the strengths or virtues of any potential hero matters if he does not overcome a certain amount of problems and bravely faces enormous challenges.

Gascoine was, as I already said, a fuck up. A greedy, stupid little man who squandered the one talent that he had been given. He didn’t overcome or face up to any of his private demons: He surrendered to them, every bloody time. Colleagues, friends and family gave him chance after chance after chance, to change his self-destructive ways and save his stupid arse. He refused to do so, every single time.

This makes for a domestic tragedy, yes - and if we must partake in yet another bout of public grieving, let us do so for Gascoine’s immediate family and (what is left of his) friends.

For the man himself, I can only think of (paraphrasing) one fitting epitaph, written by a man who knew a thing or two about real tragedies, and real heroes:

“I come to bury Gascoine, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones”

(Giuseppe Verdi)

First, I have to admit I’m not an opera fan – and that’s not simply because it sounds like Oprah (though that doesn’t help.) No, as with musicals, I’ve never understood that urge to burst out in song while telling a story. For me, the combination of singing and story telling simply doesn’t work.

Apart from the fact that most of these singers can’t act and the type-casting makes for fat, middle-aged women “playing” the part of teenage, tuberculose hookers (as in Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’), I have two major problems with this story-singing.

The first is that, whenever you enter the realm of story, you need that famous ’suspension of disbelief.’ I can do that: I like all kinds of fantastical literature but the moment one of the characters interrupts the procedure of story telling by bellowing out a tune, that suspension is buggered beyond belief.

My second problem is that of articulation. Most of the time, it’s impossible to make out the lyrics – and I don’t find it particularly helpful if a story teller has a speech impediment.

Anyway, this is not about me not being a big opera fan – though the story that inspired these anti-operatic musings has to do with the world of Verdi et al:

Cheaper tickets, top-quality sound, a relaxed vibe: cinema screenings of operas have become a big hit. Quite apart from the material advantage of seats costing substantially less than they do in an opera house, the quality of sound and picture is superbly balanced and focused. You lose the unique excitement of being in the room when it’s happening, but the incidental compensations are considerable - a more informal and comfortable atmosphere, an etiquette which allows for popcorn, less risk of a blocked view, close-ups of the stars at full throttle, and glimpses backstage and informative little interviews with the participants during the intervals.

I foresee much grumbling (and breaking out in disapproving song) about this whole idea by opera buffs. Opera is a bit of an elitist enterprise, so I doubt that these privileged few will be enthusiastic about allowing the popcorn-loving hordes in but I think it’s a brilliant idea, that might actually work perfectly fine.

I’m sure that many sports enthusiasts also were totally against broadcasting football matches live on TV – and I can already hear the same type of arguments against it: That you miss the live atmosphere, that nothing beats actually being there while it happens, that it’s somehow against the whole spirit of the thing to even want to watch it at home without committing yourself to travelling to the designated arena, dressing up for the part in your glad rags, etcetera.

Well, I’ve been to many a football match and I’ve seen a Hell of a lot more of them on TV and while I’ve enjoyed going to the stadium, most of the time, you most definitely see more of the match on TV – with the added advantage that you can turn the bloody thing off when the match turns out to be boring beyond belief.

Anyway, being at a football game and watching it on TV can both be highly enjoyable (or useless.) I would still advise any football fan to at least go to a live match one or two times, just to discover what’s it like in the flesh, so to speak – but it’s a nonsense to suggest that watching football on TV is vastly inferior to going to the stadium.

I’m sure the same will prove to be true when it comes to opera.

Of course, in my case, this will also come with the added advantage that, whenever some fat git threatens to break out in song, I will be able to turn the sound off.

(Hansel and Gretel: Some things should not be allowed to (go) live…)